Old School Game With New-School Touches
This game reminded me of the 2d side-scrolling platformers of old except that it was completely devoid of all the annoying elements that I remember from my childhood. The game-play just works. So well in fact that you find yourself enjoying the game more and more as you get deeper into it. I noticed this in particular with the length of my play sessions. At first, I'd play this game for twenty minutes or so and say, well that was alright, but as I kept playing my playtime began to creep up more and more. When I finally finished it, I was sad it was over.
I'd like to note that the GB review mentioned that they had to replay several of the levels to get enough coins to move on to the next island; however, I'm a pretty average gamer and didn't have to do this once. I guess you'd have to if you skipped past all the coin bags on your first play through, but if you get at least most of the them you'll be fine.
One caveat, I'm not an obsessive gamer so maybe that's it, but I thought a lot of the "goals" were pretty stupid. Some of them are like "play through the level without getting hit" I guess that's a nice challenge, but I pretty much ignored them. I did enjoy, however, trying to reach most of the treasures and finding the secret maps. Those added a lot to the game because they were a bit harder and required more thinking which was a nice change of pace.
In short, the game isn't a marathon but it is a whole lot of fun. Also, the shortness of the game is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the gameplay is fun enough (and not dependent on the story) so that there is a lot of replay value in the game. I'd say this game was definitely worth a purchase.
